People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, Simon and Schuster

23 November 2015

People of the Lie is an interesting read. It tackles the concept of “Evil” or what consitutes evil in the eyes of the author. How the world of science has chosen to not recognize evil and how this has impacted psychotherapy.

There were two aspects of the book I enjoyed the most - the accounts of interactions with patients, and the section on group evil where I could draw several parallels to group dynamics on a whole.

While I didn’t regret reading the book, there were sections where I did get ‘bored’. That said, the odd gem came across, noted below:

p.g. 68 - To name something correctly gives us a certain amount of power over it
p.g. 215 to 220 - specialization can cause evil (Mylai example), can draw parallels between this concept and the concept that functional silo’s cause groups to loose accountability for their actions, or blame an outside force.
p.g. 221 - emotional self-anesthesia. In stressful situations when reguarly exposed to a particular disfunction or problem, we numb ourselves against that problem, eventually it stops having am imotional impact on us. (e.g. beggars at the robots in South Africa)